The World According to Mitch Fanning

We live in exciting times.

The social media revolution we’re experiencing on a daily basis gives the entrepreneur, marketer, job seeker, product designer, inventor, creator, author, musician, and yes…even you…the ability to express an idea, connect with others, inspire a community, and perhaps even change the world.

Right now most of you are thinking, “okay Mitch, you’ve had way too much coffee,” and while that may be true (about 3 cups so far) the point I want to drive home is – for the first time in history we’re seeing both individuals and micro-entrepreneurs utilize social media to land their dream job, build a global following, build their personal brand, and create something that is bigger than themselves, their product or service.

Of course, this can’t always happen overnight.  We’ve all probably heard (and experienced) Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 Hour Rule”, claiming the key to success in any field is a matter of practicing a specific activity for a total of around 10,000 hours (or about 20 hours per week for 10 years).

That being said, the following four individuals have demonstrated that once you’ve found your “voice” and who you want to “serve” you can unleash your passion onto the world using an arsenal of free online channels to both achieve your goals and empower others. Some of you may not agree with their motives (or even like them) and that’s okay.  However, perhaps we can agree that if it weren’t for social media their achievements may not have been achieved or at least materialized so quickly.

Laura Gainor: Utilizing social media to land her dream job

“Life is about taking risks” – Laura Gainor

After deciding to move from Charlotte to Milwaukee, Laura Gainor launched a personal social media campaign using Twitter, YouTube, and SquarePik (an iPhone app allowing you to add a photo with each Foursquare post) as a means to reach out and begin communicating with @cometbranding who was, at the time, looking for a PR and Social Media Strategist.  She landed the job.

How she did it

Laura put the Comet Branding logo on a large poster and took a YouTube video (see below) to kick off her #LauraGainorToMilwaukee campaign.  When her and her husband left for Milwaukee the next day to find a place to live she brought the poster and took photos of the logo at each venue she checked in at through SquarePik and Foursquare. Throughout the process she strategically tweeted to @cometbranding to notify them of each check-in, hoping to get their attention.

After returning to Charlotte, she created a non-traditional presentation (see below) that showcased her social media efforts and posted it to Slideshare. The reaction was incredible! Within 36 hours the Slideshare presentation had reached over 1,000 views.  She was gaining more Twitter followers and people were contacting her letting her know how much she inspired them or wanted to share her story with other job seekers.

Following the community responses, Comet Branding contacted her to setup a Skype interview from Charlotte. On March 1^st she arrived in Milwaukee and went to their office to have a second interview and was immediately offered the position!

Tim Ferriss:  Create a global following with less than $10,000

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” – Mark Twain

Whether or not you agree with his business practices or life philosophies, Tim Ferriss has proven himself to be a master when it comes to online self-promotion and testing assumptions to get optimal results.  His results speak for themselves – his book, The 4-Hour Workweek has been a  #1 bestseller for over 2 1/2 years, has had over 40 printings, and has been sold in 35 languages.

Back in December 2006, after signing a book deal for the 4HWW, Tim realized he had no real marketing plan.  With very little budget and the knowledge that most books fail and those that reach the bestselling list fall off after 2 weeks, he decided to focus his activities online via cultivating relationships with 5-10 tech bloggers who were recognized as thought-leaders by the majority of “earlyvangelists” (20-35 tech savvy males – his initial target audience).

Below is his keynote with power point slides, which reveals how he started a global phenomenon with less than 10K.  Please keep in mind, Tim did spend money to promote his book, but a lot of what he did can be done online for free.

How he did it

1. The Law of the Few: Rather than target all the “high-traffic” blogs he focused on the few influential “thought-leaders” who are read by the majority (20-35 tech-savvy males).  For more on this concept read 1,000 True Fans or even the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell.

2. Offer a Movement or Cause: Not an easy task. Tim created the phrase or category of “lifestyle design”, which has inspired a subculture of people who have abandoned the “deferred-life plan” to create their ideal lifestyle in the present.

3. Front-Load Your Promotional Activities: Instead of executing a typical 4-8 week promotional campaign, Tim executed most of his promotional activities within the first week.  He was unavoidable for the first week, which resulted in a few key influencers taking notice (Merlin Mann, @scobelizer, @steverubel), which took the book viral.

4. Nurture Your Community: Tim created the 4HWW forum, but also encouraged people to build their own niche communities around the idea of “lifestyle design” using Ning and Facebook (i.e. Lifestyle design for programmers, moms, etc.)

5. Data is King: From book title, to wording, to post time, to read time – test it all using online tools that are free or cost very little (i.e. Google Adwords, Crazyegg).  For example, Tim found the best time to post to his blog was Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday 10am ET or 9pm ET.

6. SEO: Off-page factors (link-building) played a big role in Tim’s strategy more so than on-page.  Specifically, his ability (by doing all of the above) to have others create links back to either his blog or amazon page.

Listen to the keynote: To advance slides on the presentation, just hover the mouse over the right-hand side of the displayed slide and click when a hand appears.

Ferriss – Le Web 2

Julia Allison: Discover a niche, position yourself at its choke point, get noticed, and build a loyal army.

“Technology gives us direct power over our own brand.” – Julia Allison

Some might remember Julia Allison from the controversial Wired article back in July 2008.  In addition to being a “personal branding machine”, Julia is also a weekly columnist in Time Out New York and co-creator of lifecasting portal NonSociety.com.

Allison is not famous by the traditional definition, but to a devoted group of niche online followers she is a celebrity.  At the time the Wired article came out, she claimed more than 10,000 people read her blog daily, and gossip sites like Gawker, Radar Online, and Valleywag that detail her every exploit. Most importantly, however, is that she’s done this on her own and on the cheap.

How she did it

1. Stand out from the crowd – be the “condom fairy”

Julia got her first big break in 2006 after showing up to a Manhattan Halloween party dressed as a “condom fairy”.  Her online celebrity status, however, didn’t happen overnight.

It started back in the fall of 2002, as a junior at Georgetown University, Allison decided she had a thing for medical students.  So she got a job at the medical school library, where she had the opportunity to meet med students and date several of its members. Before long, she was getting invited to med student parties.

Allison moved to New York in late 2004 with her sights on breaking into the Manhattan media world by using the same strategy she used at Georgetown University – Discover a niche, position herself at its choke point, stay there until people start to notice, and build an army of followers.

In Manhattan, that choke point was Gawker, a media-gossip site that pulls in millions of readers every month, many of them fellow journalists. It was the equivalent of the med school library — the place where Allison would be seen by everyone in her target audience.

2. Engage your fans – fuel the fire

Allison’s greatest accomplishment isn’t just the amount of online content she can create on Twitter, etc.; it’s in her ability to get people to actually care about it. Her trick is to think of herself as the subject of a magazine profile, with every post or update adding dimensions to her as a character. “I treat it like a fire, you have to add logs, or it’ll be like one of those YouTube videos that flame out.”

3. Repeat steps 1 and 2

In July 2007, having conquered the Manhattan media scene, Allison set her sights on a new target: the Silicon Valley startup world. In a flashback to her Gawker breakthrough, she flew to the Bay Area to attend the annual TechCrunch party thrown by influential blogger Michael Arrington.

Allison made an immediate impression among the “techies” in attendance. The next day, Arrington posted a video on his site of Allison cooing for the camera, telling her audience that she had a thing for geeks, and urging them to call her.  Soon Allison had become a Valleywag staple, befriended the likes of CNET’s Caroline McCarthy and Sequoia Capital’s Mark Kvamme.

Gary Vaynerchuk – Changing the Wine World one Tweet at a Time

Gary Vaynerchuk helped grow his family wine business from $4 million to $50 million through the use of social media. He is also author of Crush It! a short book detailing how he uses social media and that anyone can do this.

In February 2006, Gary Vaynerchuk launched Wine Library TV, a daily video blog about wine. With the tag line “changing the wine world,” the show offers an unpretentious approach to an historically stuffy subject. Wine Library TV garners 90,000 daily viewers and has now surpassed 800 episodes, featuring celebrity guests including hockey legend Wayne Gretzky and Digg.com founder Kevin Rose, to name a few.

How he did it

While developing the audience for Wine Library TV, Gary turned to the social web. Gary joined the online conversation by becoming an active member of blogs and forums, and then proceeded to utilize web 2.0 tools such as Facebook and Twitter to connect with consumers online. The business world took note of Gary’s approach, and before long he was being invited to speak at conferences and corporations around the world.

What are you waiting for?

The above examples only scratch the surface.  There are many more – these are just a few. The important thing to remember is their results can be duplicated.  You really have no excuse…you don’t need a lot of money to start, you don’t always need to have skill (in the traditional sense), and you are certainly not required to be on the “most sexiest list” to find your passion, build your personal brand, add value to the online conversation, and empower others.

Ask anyone who has achieved any success and they’ll most likely tell you most of their success is a direct result of being part of a community – be it online or face-to-face (or both!).  It will take some time, but remember, doing the unthinkable is easier than you think.

Start today.

Question – How are you (or someone you know) using social media to empower others?  Let me know at #empowerothers

It’s ironic how as things change, some things remain the same.  I was reminded of this valuable, yet simple lesson recently while reading one of Jeremiah Owyang’s (@jowyang) insightful posts on his blog – Web Strategy.

The lesson is one you’ve probably heard a thousand times before (god knows I have).  In fact, 10 years ago, one of my first mentors (Bill Bishop) engrained this principle in me, which he elegantly referred to as The Relationship-First Formula and even wrote a book about it. His philosophy was simple – design your business and/or strategies around a specific customer and their needs, not the latest marketing medium or tool.  Simple, but not always easy to implement.

To Twitter or Not To Twitter? – that IS NOT the question

If you or your clients have asked this question or anything similar to it then you’re asking the wrong questions.  The problem…drum roll please…is that we as marketers, entrepreneurs, and product developers (including myself) can be too focused on the “latest shiny digital product, tool, and tactic” – from crowdsourcing, to the iPad, to the launch of Google Buzz, to the latest upgrades in Hootsuite.  While there’s a need for this type of focus, it should be at the end of your strategy or planning process, not the beginning.

The thing we need to keep reminding ourselves with is – business has not changed, just the mediums in which consumers now use. Don’t throw out the baby (strategy) with the bathwater just because new media channels have emerged.  Instead of focusing on a specific product or technology first, develop a strategy based on a specific audience, their behaviours, and needs – rather than a “Facebook” or “iPhone” strategy created in a vacuum on its own.  Focus on building a place for customers who want to come interact with each other, and your brand (if that’s the goal).

I like Owyang’s analogy of approaching your web strategy as you would to build a house. In other words, focus on who you’re inviting to come over to your property (website) and what they want (needs).  Next, think about the different rooms in your house, and how they all serve a different purpose, from the decor (branding), front door (advertising), living room (community).

These tools are used in different ways, some are great for attracting visitors (traffic generation) others encourage them to stay and to something (interactive media and content), while others are great for encouraging them to interact with you (social networks). In any case, the value of each of these on their own is weak, and the real value is all of them together in context.

Methodology For Integrated Strategy Development

There are PLENTY of ways to develop your strategy.  However, one that I’ve used recently, is a little acronym called POST (invented by Forrester), which focuses on people, objectives, strategy, then tools (and only in that order).

People: Don’t start a strategy until you know the needs, social behaviours, and capabilities of your target audience.

Start by asking the following questions, “Where are my customers online?  Who do they trust?  Who do they influence?  What are they doing and why?” (i.e. watching, sharing, commenting, producing, evangelizing)

Objectives: Are you planning to build an application, program, product or campaign to collaborate with your best customers in order innovate and evangelize others?  Listen to your customers or to talk with them?  Whatever, your plan is, make it actionable.  Based on your research, if your customers are commenters, allow them to comment.  If they rely on friends, encourage sharing.  If they are trusted by others, highlight them as advocates in front of their community.

Strategy: Decide on what you want to accomplish.  Do you want to get people talking about your products? Do you want a permanent focus group for testing product ideas and generating new ones?  How will things be different afterwards? Imagine the endpoint and you’ll know where to begin.

Technology. An online video? Social media campaign? Widget or two? Once you know your people, objectives, and strategy, your marketing efforts and technology choices will naturally unfold.  This may sound simple to the sophisticated reading this blog, but it works. Try it. Think your strategy through.

Putting it all Together – A Fictional Example

The following is a fictional example of how understanding your customer’s social behaviours can lead to better results using the above methodology.  Since the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics are going on, I’ll use a fictional snowboarding company in the example.

Situation: After White’s repeat gold medal performance, a snowboarding company would like to leverage this “buzz” by reaching snowboarders who ride halfpipe and introduce them to their new snowboard they just launched called “Amptitude” (fictional).

1. Where are the snowboarders online today?

• Using monitoring tools and surveys (prior to the games) to find hot spots in conversation and specific URL locations the data found that 75% of the targeted snowboarders visited Facebook daily (fictional).
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• Find out what they are talking about.  Brand monitoring found out that the most talked about topic when discussing snowboards was price, quality, and ability to improve a riders ability to perform tricks.

2. What are their online social behaviours?

• Survey results showed they are mainly watching and sharing, very few producers.  But those who are producing are very active making recommendations, blogging, uploading pictures and videos of them and their friends riding half pipe (perhaps even @shaun_white).

Findings & Actions

The company was able to identify who the influencers (producers) were, how to reach them, and introduce them to their new board by providing them with interactive content and social widgets that would help them reproduce and spread the word to the rest of the “passive” snowboarders who watched/shared to friend in order to reach a greater segment of customers.  This example, of course, is an oversimplification of how to begin brainstorming strategy, but I think you get the idea.

What About Strategic Partners?

This philosophy should also apply to your strategic partners who specialize in emerging digital marketing technologies and platforms. Look for partners who focus on customer behaviors and client goals.  As the technology landscape changes at an even faster pace than ever before, brands must have criteria in selecting the right partners.  Again, my compliments to Owyang who came up with this review scorecard to see how your strategic partners stack up.  You can also use this as key criteria in finding new partners who specialize on emerging technologies.

Are You Approaching Your Digital Strategy Backwards?

Again, if you started by asking the question “should we Twitter?” or “Should we be on Google Buzz?” the answer is probably yes – you are doing it backwards.  In any other business initiative we start by figuring out what we want to accomplish.  Interactive technologies work the same way – they accomplish things.  It’s time to stop going digital because it’s cool or because everyone is talking about it.  It’s time to start doing it because it’s effective and measurable, but first develop your customer strategy.

Upwards and Onwards!

Mitch

In the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a lot of “crowdsourcing” (crowd sourcing) initiatives popping up in the media, which makes me think…“could this be the year crowdsourcing goes mainstream?”

From fighting diabetes to social media campaigns; from building off-road racers to the military; from reinventing public policy to producing a Nine Inch Nails music video (late ’09) – everyone (big and small) seems to be experimenting with crowdsourcing these days.

Crowdsourcing is not a new phenomenon. Creatives, artists, coders, and writers have used it for years.  The basic premise is to tap into the vast wisdom of the general population to funnel the best ideas to the top and execute them.  In short, Wikipedia FOR EVERYTHING! In the 90s, crowdsourcing was used by Russian artists Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid to determine what people (in various countries) wanted to see in a painting (done via telephone polls – wow…how far we’ve come).

Its digital grassroots can be traced back to the open source movement (Wikis, etc.).  Companies like iStockphoto and Threadless put themselves on the map using crowdsourcing as their core business model (although not intentionally).  In June 2006, Jeff Howe officially coined the term crowdsourcing in a Wired magazine article, and later went on to write a book on the subject in 2008.

Crowdsourcing is sometimes related to as open innovation and is becoming popular as a virtual outsourcing strategy. Examples of such companies are InnoCentive, Innovation Exchange (located in Toronto), and NineSigma, where corporations can offer incentives for solving their innovation challenges and business problems.

Here ends the history lesson.

Today, regardless of how and when, it seems the mainstreaming of social media and niche communities being comfortablesharing ideas online have quickly allowed crowdsourcing to be a popular strategy as the 2nd decade of the 21st century begins.

As a marketing strategy (or should we say new business model marketers need to understand??)  I encourage the idea of giving customers more control of the brand (they already have it so why not officially partner up with them).  I realize it can be a risky proposition for any brand to take and is not the appropriate strategy for everyone, but if brands are willing to change (think Seth Godin and Meatball Sundae) and make it easy and fun for customer to engage it’s a step they should take if they are going to effectively innovate with and give control to their true brand managers…there customers.

On the outsourcing end of things, there are a few controversial issues that need to be ironed out (i.e. Intellectual Property rights, creative exploitation, etc.).  However, it seems the companies who’ve done a good job make being a part of a niche community (i.e. doing something people have a passion for) a win-win situation, which has its benefits beyond “getting paid”.  No easy answer here, and I’m certainly no expert on the subject so I’ll leave it at that.

Finally, to wrap things up, if you’re still not convinced that, if deployed correctly, crowdsourcing can be extremely powerful and effective here are a few recent examples of how marketers and entrepreneurs seem to be using crowdsourcing the right way based on actual results.

Secret London Facebook group amasses 180,000 in 2 weeks

Bristol university graduate Tiffany Philippou originally set up the group in response to a competition from ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi to win a mere summer internship.  Two weeks after launching, the Secret London Facebook group has over 180,000members and counting and is poised to propel it’s 21 year old creator into her first startup.

“The explosion of the group is reflective of the generation online now,” Philippou says,  “as everyone [in] my generation is on Facebook.  I’m 21 and have completely grown up in the online evironment.”

Translating the group’s success into a site and community may be a leap, but Philippou is already bringing in a team to achieve it and word is lots of other London startups are lending her a hand. She’s now also crowdsourcing the features of the site from the members.

Social Media Marketing: Pepsi Refresh Project

Companies like Pepsi are going to extensive lengths to foster collaboration with fans, and the payoff has been big. The company’s is already several stages into the Mountain Dew DEWmocracy campaign — a plan to launch a new Mountain Dew flavor with the public’s involvement at all levels of the process.  Recently, PepsiCo just launched the Pepsi Refresh Project on January 13th. Rather than spending money on Super Bowl television ads this year, the company is spending $20 million on a social media campaign. The campaigns are part of a crowdsourcing effort that’s part of the larger PepsiCo plan to more closely integrate consumers with the brand.

Local Motors – First Open Source Car Company to Reach Production

Step inside the Local Motors’ office and it reveals itself as a mind-blowing example of the power of micro-factories. In June 2010, Local Motors will officially release the Rally Fighter, a $50,000 off-road (but street-legal) racer. The design was crowdsourced, as was the selection of mostly off-the-shelf components, and the final assembly will be done by the customers themselves in local assembly centers as part of a “build experience.”  The result is a car that might put Detroit to shame.

Trent Reznor of the Nine Inch Nails

When it comes to the web and social media Reznor just gets it.

When a deal to commercially film one of his concerts for release on DVD fell through, he came up with a totally relaxed camera and recording policy for this shows on tour.  He released raw, high def footage of the shows as torrents that anyone could download, share, mix, edit and basically do with what they please.  The video above was released completely by Reznors’ fans. Volunteers who will make nothing in terms of money, instead doing something because the love it and they want to share it.

Would love to hear your thoughts on crowdsourcing (good and bad) via comment or Twitter @mitchfanning.

Until next time – upwards and onwards!

–

Note:  as a side-note the term crowdfunding seems to a new trend that has been inspired by the term crowdsourcing.  In fact, according to Wikipedia, on January 25th, 2010, RocketHub launched as the first online platform to publicly embrace the term “crowdfunding.”

Excerpt from R.M. Vaughan‘s article in Globe & Mail

CLICK IMAGE ABOVE TO WATCH MOVIE TRAILER

Ted Remerowski’s documentary traces Google’s rise from its establishment in 1998 to its confrontation with the Chinese government in January, 2010, and wonders whether it’s living up to its corporate motto: Don’t Be Evil.

According to filmmaker Ted Remerowski’s new documentary Google World (debuting on  CBC – TV’s Doc Zone on Feb. 11 at 9 p.m.), the corporation has a mind-bending 300-year plan to put all known information into digital “clouds,” virtual warehouses run by its  spooky, HAL 9000-like mega computers. And that plan gives Remerowski reason to pause,  because when  Google says “all information,” it means everything about you and me as well.

R.M. Vaughan: Google’s 300-year plan sounds monomaniacal, to say the least, but is there anything inherently wrong with wanting to create a “world library”?

Ted Remerowski: Absolutely not. It’s a great concept. The difficulty is that you’re talking about all intelligence, [but] held by whom? And how is it being used? Google claims that it is transparent and open, but what I discovered is that when you’re talking about their intellectual property, they are not transparent. They keep everything very close to the chest. What happens when they have all the knowledge at their disposal? That’s the question. Now, it’s not going to be a question we’re going to have to answer, because it’s 300 years away, but they are moving in that direction, and as they keep getting more and more information, you’ve got to ask yourself: Are we getting access to that information? Are they doing something with that information that we don’t know? Who knows? What do you do when you have the smartest guys in the room holding such enormous clout over data?

Read the entire article on the Globe & Mail website here: